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tv   CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley  CBS  May 17, 2012 7:00pm-7:30pm EDT

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zimmerman shot the unarmed teenager one night in february. this is a picture of-- that was released this evening of martin-- that's him on the left-- at a 7-eleven as he was buying candy and an iced tea before he left to go to the neighborhood where zimmerman would ultimately shoot him. these are the last known pictures of trayvon martin alive. martin was visiting a home in that neighborhood. the question is what happened in the moments before zimmerman fired the fatal shot? the case set off a national debate over racial profiling and the right of self-defense. mark strassmann has the late-breaking details on the evidence tonight. mark. >> reporter: scott, this evidence covers 183 pages. it includes dozens of audio recordings, mostly interviews, surveillance videos, and reports about physical evidence. and it tells the story of a struggle just before the fatal shot. you're look at the last images of trayvon martin alive.
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this is surveillance video taken at a 7-eleven store in sanford, where the 17-year-old bought skittles and a can of iced tea before heading back to the town house subdivision where he was staying with family. 20 minutes later he would be dead, shot fatally once in the chest by george zimmerman. today's document release includes crime scene phot organization including this one of zimmerman's .9-millimeter handgun, the first time we've seen it. these photos taken by sanford police show the injuries zimmerman says he sustained in a fight with martin. he hay broken nose, two black eyes and a gash in the back of his head. the autopsy reports also details the gunshot wound to martin's left chest that killed him. it's surrounded by a gun powered burn called stip ling. that suggests zimmerman's gun was fired at near point-blank range. diagrams also note martin had a blood spot on his head, a brise on his eye, and small scarring on both hands, all suggesting he had been in a fight. toxicology reports also reveal martin had a chemical residue of
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marijuana in his system. not surprising. martin was serving a two-week school suspension for a drug violation when he was killed. one witness told police he saw a black male mounted on a white male throwing punches mixed martial arts style. a sanford police report stated the confrontation was ultimately avoidable by zimmerman if zimmerman had remained in mis vehicle and awaited the arrival of law enforcement. the special prosecutor has blocked the release of about 10% of the state's case still under seal are autopsy photos and videos, the names of some witnesses and telephone records. but, scott, this is clearly the best picture yet we have the case the state of florida intends to use against george zimmerman when it brings him to trial for second-degree murder. >> pelley: mark, why was all of this evidence released by the court today? >> reporter: because finally, scott, both sides have had a chance to take a look at most of it, and assuming that each side has now said, okay, i'm confident in the release of this
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kind of video, this kind of document. there are some sensitive information here including witness names. that material and information has been redacted. this is the information that both sides apparently are comfortable for all of us to see. >> pelley: mark, thank you very much. there was a report today that really got our attention in the newsroom. it has to do with hdl. for years, it has been known as the good cholesterol, and we've been told that increasing our hdl levels would protect us against heart disease. well, today, the british medical journal "the lancet" had some surprising new data that dr. jon lapook has been looking at. >> it examine people are naturally occurring high levels of h.d.olympic. the assumption was they would be less likely to hearts. dr. sekar kathiresan of massachusetts general hospital led the analysis. >> the results surprised us.
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we found the individuals who carried the hdl boosting variant were not protected from heart attack. >> reporter: until today, it was believe hdl helped remove bad cholesterol from the lining of the blood vessels. ed study suggests will hdl may not be protecting the heart. factors that affect hdl, exercise, avoiding obesity and not smoking may be what's really helping. for years, drug companies are unsuccessfully attempted to find a drug that would prevent heart attacks by raising hdl. pfizer spent roughly $800 million alone on a drug that railed hdl, but increases heart attacks and death. cardiologists like christopher cannon have not given up on raising hdl. >> despite the current studies that show the small changes in good cholesterol don't provide benefit, we're still very hopeful that bigger increases in the good cholesterol could be helpful. >> pelley: john is joining us
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now. 33 million americans are taking statins every day to lower their bad cholesterol. does this change anything. >> reporter: it doesn't. it shoels lowering bad cholesterol helps prevent heart attacks and even after today's studiestudies it good to hear m. if it is low you are statistically at increased risk of having a heart attack. >> pelley: keep taking your statins. jon, thank you very much. facebook set a healthy price today for its first public stock offering. the social network will be valued at $38 a share when it goes on sale tomorrow. that means facebook will be valued at more than $100 billion, and that is a record for an american company at the time of its initial public offering. is it worth it? we asked john black stone to look into that. >> reporter: facebook has attracted 900 million users in less than a decade and made a billion dollars last year. now, it needs to prove it could be worth $100 billion. bo fishback is c.e.o. of zaarly,
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an online classified section. >> i think five or 10 years is an eternity in our world. and some of what facebook looks like today, i don't know, looks a little like aol looked in, like, the late 90s. >> you've got mail. >> reporter: in the late 90s, america online was the darling of wall street, valued at over $160 billion when it merged with time warn ebut by 2010, aol lost 86% of its subscribers. it's now worth $2.six billion. >> the bigger you get the harder it is to go fast. but so far, facebook has done an incredible job. >> reporter: facebook makes 80% of its money fromitation or about $4.34 per user, but to justify the $100 billion valuation, analysts say ad revenue needs to rise to several hundred dollars per user. companies are split on facebook's potential. this week, general motors announced it would stop paying facebook for ad space.
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but ford said facebook ads were effective. paul saffo, who writes about secnology trends, says facebook is smart enough to knowsst future depends on more than advertising. >> facebook's long-term goal is to try and be the gateway to the internet. >> reporter: here's how. if facebook has its way, it will like a clubhouse where people go first, sign in with just one password, and get directed to thousands of web sites tailored to user profiles' likes and dislikes. >> has facebook become kind of like a driver's license for the internet? >> i mean, i think they're work it. >> reporter: as it grows towards 1 billion users, facebook's potential reach is undeniable, much like televisioned in the early 9050s purpose there were doubts tv could ever make money, butting people figured out how to turn ist into a business. >> the same thing is true today about social media. don't worry, they'll figature out. >> reporter: but the san francisco silicon valley region is filled with fast-moving young
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companies, so facebook will have to figure it out, scott, before some small start-up does. >> pelley: john thanks very much. another losing way of day on wall street. worries that uranium's financial problems will spread here sent the dow down it a four-month low of 12,442. the dow has now fallen 11 out of 12 sessions and that's the first time that has happened in 10 years. one thing that is going up is the temperature. today, government forecasters predicted that the summer will be hotter than average for most of the nation. chip reid tells us that the warning signs are there. >> reporter: in the southwestern united states, the wildfire season is already off to an early start. in northern arizona, near the historic mining town of crown king, a fire blew out of control today, due to hot, dry conditions and strong winds. and now comes more. bad news. those conditions with likely to continue opinion a new report by
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the federal government's climate prediction center says the southern two-third of the nation is likely to be warmer than normal during june, july, and august, especially in the southwest. that means the potential for the worst wildfire season in years. professor david robinson is a climatologist with rutgers university. >> when your afternoon thunderstorms start erupting across the mountainous west this summer, oftentimes they're not packed with a lot of moisture, but they're packed with a lot of lightning, and with that tinder dry underbrush and forest can pease, there's a real concern of wildfires across the west this summer. >> reporter: but it's not only the west that's going through a heat wave. in the mountains of north carolina this year, winter never even seemed to happen. and at a minimarathon in indianapolis earlier this morning runners collapsed with temperatures in the 80s and humidity near 100%. in fact, according to the climate prediction center, may
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2011 through april 2012 was the warmest 12-month period in the u.s. since 1895 when the government first started keeping records. one question, scott, is why is it expected to be warmer than usual this summer? well, the climate prediction center says there's no single answer but one factor is that this was a very dry winter. when the-- when it's that dry, the soil is dry. it's easier for the sun to heat up the ground, and then that heat in the ground then radiates into the air. >> pelley: chip, thank you very much. america's profile is changing. there's a scandal over stolen babies that has rocked spain. and the discovery of thousands of asteroids. could any of them inn danger the earth when the cbs evening news continues? i'm here to unleash my inner cowboy. instead i got heartburn. [ horse neighs ] hold up partner. prilosec isn't for fast relief. try alka-seltzer. it kills heartburn fast.
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descent in comparison probably to what i grew up with. >> reporter: hispanics are the nation's fastest growing minority group making up more than half of all infants born in california, texas, and new mexico. >> i see it every day in the stores, like, for example, when i go to target, i see the translations of the signs or the labels. >> reporter: it's not just the big cities. in des moines, iowa, a third of the staff at the primary health care clinic is bilingual. and they have phones in the exam rooms to connect with translators for other languages if need be. when grant wood painted american gothic in 1930, america was nearly 90% white. today, the united states has a much different complexion. hispanics make up close to 17% of the population, the nation's largest minority group. african americans are 14% of the population. asians are 5.8%. >> this puts an exclamation
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point on a trend that we knew was coming. >> reporter: fry, who studies population trends at the brookings institution, says a 25-year influx of immigrants explains the change face of america, a change, he says, that will carry profound political implications as infants like veronica honoreveron veron hern. >> this will be really important as they start aging and voting in large numbers. >> the other people of the puzzle is the aging white population. the median age of whites in this country is 42. the median age of hispanics is 28. that's a big difference, scott, when it comes to which group will be having more babies. >> assuras: burma in southeast asia has long been one of the most oppress and i have isolated regime but military rulers have taken steps towards democracy and today the obama administration lifted most restrictions on investment and trade with burma and will send an ambassador there. a decades-old scandal involving
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think happened to your baby? >> i think that my baby was sold. >> reporter: sold? >> sold, yes. >> reporter: on a town square in a spanish village, linda merrill tells a dark story, how she awoke in a hospital after giving birth to find a doctor standing over her. >> and i said, "where is my baby?" and he said, "well, your baby-- your baby died." >> reporter: 30 years have passed since linda lost her baby, time to learn she's not alone. linda is one of thousands of spanish women now organizing themselves to search for babies they believe were stolen by an industrial-scale baby trafficking racket involving government officials, the medical establishment, and the church. linda, the daughter of an american airman who had been based in spang was given papers saying her baby had been buried. she never saw him. >> i kept on crying, i wanted to see my baby and i wanted to see my baby. and he said it wasn't a good
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idea. i was very young. i could have more children, and that he had suffocated. >> reporter: across spain, graves are being dug up on court orders to see if babies really were buried in them. laura perralis fought for years to have the coffin she was told contains the remains of her newborn son exhumed. as a mother she says she knows the healthy son she held in her arms for a day and a half before he was taken away did not die. >> no. >> reporter: you don't believe. >> no. >> reporter: spain's stolen baby scandal dates back to the dark days of the franco dictatorship when an, this whether the government or catholic church, was not questioned. a lot of painful spanish history was buried during the franco era, a lot involving the the collusion of the church. now that history is being dug up. they're digging for the truth. one prosecution of a now-80-year-old nun is already under way.
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sister maria is accused of taking a child from its mother and is suspected of being part of a ring that moved thousands of babies from what it saw as loose-morald families to more desirableuc more catholic families. >> they didn't probably think that we could bring up our babies right. that was one of the things the nuns say. i think they're just-- they were kind of playing like as it they were god, you know. >> reporter: laura perralis' search for the truth will take a while longer. remains of a child were found at this dig. d.n.a. tests will show whether it's hers. if not, she'll keep searching for the son who would now be 31 and who she feels is somewhere looking for her. mark phillips, cbs news, alicante, spain. >> pelley: probably no reason to worry, but nasa said today there are nearly 5,000 asteroids whizzing through our solar system that are close enough to pose some danger to the earth. nasa says each one is big enough to make it through the
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atmosphere and blow up a big city, though, the chance of that happening is probably astronomical. quincy jones called donna summer's music the soundtrack of the 70s. remember the queen of disco next. a party? [ music plays, record skips ]
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>> pelley: finally tonight, young folks may know it as a tv sitcom, but a lot of us lived through the real 70s show, a decade of bell bottoms and sideburns, polliester suits and "saturday night fever." disco was king and donna summer was its queen. donna summer died today of cancer. she was 63. anthony mason has her story and her music. >> reporter: in the late 70s, at the height of disco fever, she scored four number one hits in just a little over a year. and donna summer went on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide. one of seven children born to a working class boston family, summer started singing in church where, she told cbs "sunday
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morning" in 2008, god spoke to her one day. >> so i began to tell over, god said i'm going to be famous. and they, of course, thought i was insane. but that's okay. i had the last laugh. >> reporter: then in 1975, she had the idea for a song called "love to love you baby." >> but i didn't have that many words so i just did a lot of ooohs and aaahs. >> reporter: those oohs and aaahs got the song banned by some radio stations but they also made summer an international star. in 1978, her song for the disco film "thank god it's friday" would become her signature tune. ♪ let's dance the last dance . >> reporter: and win her the first of five grammys. in later years, summer spent time raising her three daughters and four grandchildren. but she always retained her title, the queen of disco. >> i'm trying to change it to empress now. i've been queen long enough.
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i'm older. i'd like to be an empress, okay ♪ last dance tonight ♪. >> reporter: cancer ending her rein at age 63, but in nightclubs for years to come, donna summer will still have the last word. anthony mason, cbs news, new york. >> pelley: and that's the cbs evening news for tonight. for all of us at cbs news all around the world ugood night. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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now, "entertainment tonight" the most watched entertainment newsmagazine in the world. the latest on the surprise death of disco diva donna summer. ♪ >> the cancer battle that she kept a secret. where she spent her final days. and -- ♪ >> the songs that will live on forever. >> i know i'm a star. plus her memorable performance on our stage. ♪ >> and her very last "e.t." interview. >> it doesn't get better. you have to be singing in

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